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Article
Comparative American Studies
An International Journal
Copyright © 2004 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and
New Delhi) www.sagepublications.com Vol 2(1): 61–73
[1477-5700(200403):2:1;61–73;041288]
DOI: 10.1177/1477570004041288
The enduring function of caste: colonial and
modern Haiti, Jamaica, and Brazil
The economy of race, the social organization of caste,
and the formulation of racial societies
Tekla Ali Johnson
University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA
Abstract Modern day social hierarchies in Jamaica, Brazil and, to a
degree, Haiti find their roots in the colonial context, where planters stratified laborers in order to maximize control. During slavery planters found
artificial ways of influencing African identity, dividing enslaved Africans
by their occupations and by skin color. These distinctions created
divisions among workers and color proved a singularly powerful and
enduring symbol of social and economic mobility. The American propensity for creating racial classifications for Africans and further divisions
for ‘mixed-race’ offspring traditionally served economic interests. Their
perpetuation into the present may signal the continued utility of dividing
Africans into subgroups as a means of maintaining control of racial
politics in the Americas.
Keywords African women ● bi-racial ● color-conscious
plantation life ● race and gender ● slave societies
●
In an article published in the NAACP’s Crisis Magazine in 1914, W.E.B.
Du Bois argued that legal restrictions did not bar Brazil’s eight million
Africans and ‘mulattos’ from progressing in society, in contrast to the
system of segregation in the United States. ‘All these elements (African,
European, Indian) are fusing into one light “mulatto” race’, he argued.1 Du
Bois, however, did not explain why black people in Brazil, like those in
North America, remained disproportionately poor following their emancipation from slavery. Or why other African Americans like Ollie Stewart,
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a writer who traveled throughout Brazil in 1940, did find a color-line.
Restaurant owners refused to serve Stewart, and 11 white and ‘light’
hotel clerks claimed to have ‘no vacancies’ before he finally found lodging.
In Brazil, Stewart argues, it is the ‘light-skinned colored man . . . not the
white, who perpetuates caste privilege’ (Hellwig, 1992: 91, 97).
This article argues that modern day social hierarchies in Jamaica, in
Brazil and, to a degree, in Haiti have their roots in the colonial context
where planters stratified laborers in order to maximize their control.
While the North American planter class employed the same general
strategies for management of African workers as did planters in Brazil
and Jamaica, there were differences in each hemisphere’s slave regimes,
since climatic conditions brought unique pressures to bear on separate
agricultural societies, and differences in the enslaved population’s demographics created contours in the caste systems of each racial society. Yet,
in both hemispheres, white planters found ways of influencing Creole
identity, dividing enslaved Africans according to their free, slave, or
trustee status. African captives were also separated by their occupations
and by skin color. While all of these distinctions combined to create
divisions among workers, color proved the most useful and enduring as
a symbol of social and economic position – a fact which sheds light on the
debate over whether racism gave rise to slavery or whether racist ideologies fulfilled various psychological and practical needs of slavery.
What follows is an examination of caste’s meaning in the economic and
political systems of three colonial societies – Jamaica, Brazil, and Haiti –
and how they connected with and were similar to racial patterns of slaveholding in the United States. In the Caribbean and Latin America, caste
systems were loose enough to provide mobility between the groups
directly above and below one, but functioned to keep most dark-skinned
Africans from entering middling or elite society (Hellwig, 1992: 100).
E. Franklin Frazier argues that Brazil by the mid-20th century was a
country of ‘mixed-bloods’, most of whom identified with the whites
(Hellwig, 1992: 131, 133). Indeed, the social creation of ‘mulattos’ in
Brazil and Jamaica allowed planters to dominate non-white majorities
and served to cement slave societies. It was, in fact, these mixed-race
people upon whom much of the workings of domination depended.
Although they occasionally operated with fellow Africans as resistors,
‘mulattos’ more frequently helped whites sustain slavery and the oppression of blacks.
Historical circumstances, combined with economic opportunities,
account for the different perspectives on race adopted by Americans and
Brazilians. The United States had a caste system which excluded all nonwhites, while Brazil’s social system disparaged only the dark-skinned
man and woman. Generally, in Brazil, only a person who has no white
ancestry is considered black (Degler, 1971: xiii; Hellwig, 1992: 135).
Where many North American Caucasians saw two races – black and
white – Brazilians made racial categories for color gradations at each
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The enduring function of caste colonial
point on the spectrum from African to European. In Brazil, for example,
Pretos are dark, Cabo Verdes are slightly lighter, and Mulatto Claros are
lighter still (Hellwig, 1992: 102–3).
Du Bois, however, was correct in that by the early 20th century no legal
segregation of the races existed in Brazil, nor did statutes forbidding
miscegenation survive into the 20th century. In addition, mixed unions
between whites and ‘mulattos’ were accepted in Brazil and in Jamaica
throughout most of the slavery era. Paradoxically, the demographics of all
three nations (Jamaica, Brazil, and Haiti) were overwhelmingly African,
so that African culture and history intertwined with, if not predominated
in, each country. Still, throughout the 20th century, mixed-race people,
rather than dark-skinned blacks, dominated Brazilian popular literature
and art. Brazil’s racial discrimination and color-conscious stratification
is, therefore, complex and not immediately obvious – to the extent that
modern Brazilians even boast of their ‘racial democracy’. However,
racism exists within the very structure of Brazilian society, and to darkskinned travelers, Brazil’s three zones of differing race relations are clear.
Sao Paulo State, Rio de Janeiro and surrounding communities, and states
in the south all differ in their treatment of African people. Generally, the
further south one travels the greater the racial prejudice. However clear
cut, geographical caste structures are not simple nor one dimensional.
Social categories in Brazil are not based upon color alone but on a combination of color and class. A ‘white’ person is generally defined as any
wealthy person, including rich blacks, fairly well-off ‘mulattos’, and a
person of any income level who looks white. Thus, the social designation
of blackness in Brazil is derived both from a consideration of appearance
and economic status. A ‘black’, then, is any average-income or poor darkskinned person. Degler argues that ‘the simplest way to conceive of this
complex social system is that marrying a darker-skinned person, unless
he or she is extremely wealthy, results in a lowering of one’s social class
(see Degler, 1992: 5, 8, 15, 18, 96, 99, 104–5, 115).
It is tempting to conclude that the bases for racial disparities in the
formerly English, French, and Portuguese colonies are economic and
relate only to the perpetuation of a class of unskilled laborers, but this
explanation does not account for the greater difficulty that dark-skinned
blacks have in breaking out of the lower economic and social group today.
Neither does it explain why the standards of beauty in Brazil and Jamaica
are white or light, considering the Africanness of the population base, nor
why mixed-raced people acquire better education and jobs.
Systematic reinforcement of psycho-social structures established
during slavery must be factored into any analysis of Jamaica, Brazil, and
Haiti, for economic explanations alone do not explain the continuance of
racism, and the pervasive operation of color castes. In reality, the reproduction of Brazil’s class structure, at its core, revolves around issues of
sexuality and family formation. European visitors to Brazil in the late 18th
century reported the ‘sexual fire’ of enslaved females, where both the
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black and ‘mulatto’ women ‘tempted’ white men (Freyre, 1946: 424). Hindsight, argues Gilberto Freyre, makes it clear that enslavement equaled
sexual accessibility, and that white men forced many enslaved women into
a form of prostitution, where cycles of sexual relations were a necessary
component of survival (p. 425). An imbalance in the male-female sex
ratios, and an overall preponderance of males on plantations along with
black-white power differentials, resulted in white men’s frequent use of
African women as a sexual ‘outlet’ (p. 426). Enslaved black men, meanwhile, often longed for the companionship of wives and lovers, while
observing white planters and overseers placing young African females in
domestic occupations separated from the African community. Indulging
themselves, white planters at times ‘created harems of young girls’
(pp. 426, 428). Sexual activity between planters and overseers and African
domestic workers occurred throughout slave systems in the West Indies
and Latin America. Enslaved women domestics learned Portuguese,
French or English, henceforth serving as interpreters between the
dominant class and the enslaved population (Cardoso, 1975: 74).
Women and young girls were raped by white men with impunity.
Managers of West Indian estates were so infamous for their sexual
aggression toward enslaved Africans that they ceased to hide their behaviors, and a typical estate ledger listed the births of ‘mixed’ offspring at
around 7% annually between 1816 and 1838 (Berlin and Morgan, 1993:
79–81; see also Ward, 1988: 171).
The few West Indian female slave narratives that exist attest to the
pressures on enslaved women, and especially upon domestic servants.
These documents belie the notion that house slaves had a life of ease
(Paquet, 1992: 133, 136). Children resulting from the frequent sexual
assaults and from concubinage were listed as colored or brown and were
often further categorized into ‘quadroon . . . mestee’ and other groupings
(see Craton, 1997: 219; see also Ward, 1988: 183). Despite their often
violent conceptions, any one of these offspring had a chance at being
treated better than un-mixed African captives, whom whites, according
to contemporaries, attempted to treat like ‘draft animals’ (Ward, 1988:
173). Color became (to borrow Carl Degler’s term) as important as an
‘escape route’ from slavery for Africans as it was as a controlling and
organizing mechanism for whites (Degler, 1971). After the 18th century,
the skin tones of incoming Africans were recorded in slave registers. With
the exception of the United States, the distinction between blacks and
‘coloreds’ was almost universal throughout the Africa diaspora in the
Americas (Ward, 1988: 18–19). In some locations even greater interest
was taken in melanin levels. An 1815 slave registration ledger from St
Lucia lists 34 shades of black captives from ‘Negre’ through ‘Rouge’ to
‘Meive Blanche’ (Higman, 1984: 154, 527). Patterns of color-coded affiliations established during slavery have persisted in Brazilian cities,
especially in high-income areas. Inferior education and discrimination
over job opportunities due to racial prejudice has created cycles of
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poverty among black Brazilians, whose absence in the middle class is
pervasive. Specifically, Brazil’s and Jamaica’s school systems directed
dark-skinned Africans towards service and labor jobs.
This is not to say that, in this apparently segregated world, some poor
whites did not still reside on the borders of black communities. Their
location there, among or alongside blacks, would seem to defy racism’s
creation of segregated and impoverished communities of black people. It
should be recalled, however, that just as poor whites may sometimes be
found in close proximity to low-income African neighborhoods today, so,
too, did landless whites work alongside blacks under the early slave
regimes. Following the otherwise dominant historical pattern, however,
most Brazilian whites today are ‘more segregated’ from blacks than they
are from ‘mulattos’. More revealing is the tendency of mixed-race people,
especially in the present-day, to separate themselves from other Africans,
presumably encouraged by an ideology that stresses whitening (Telles,
1992: 194–5).
Winthrop Jordan finds a correlation between the acceptance of
miscegenation and the emergence of a majority black population. In the
American mainland colonies, whites at first hid their sexual liaisons and
private abuse of black women, partially by refusing to acknowledge their
mixed offspring. However, in contrast to the ‘mulatto’ population of the
United States, which stayed below 6% annually, the mixed-race population in Bahia, Brazil, reached 40% in 1850 (Jordan, 1962: 183, 195).
These Brazilian and West Indian ‘mulattos’ began developing their own
social mores, which often mirrored the values of whites. The most notable
shift in their attitudes was their general acceptance of slavery. Surprisingly, in Brazil, mixed-race freedmen who owned slaves were no more
likely to free their human property than were whites. By contrast, as was
the case, for example, in Bridgetown, dark-skinned blacks were much
more likely to manumit their captives. Socially, mixed-race Creoles in the
British West Indies formed a middle group ‘separated from, and superior
to, the black peasantry’ and more likely to make it into the professional
class (Ward, 1998: 196, 200; see also Schwartz, 1982: 83; Higman, 1984:
385; Pitman, 1926: 637).
Clearly present-day systems of racial classification originated under
slavery. Racial categories evolved in plantation communities as a means
of stratifying workers. Encouragement of inter-group prejudice helped to
ensure the subordination of Africans so that whites’ investments, as well
as their lives, might be safe. Yet, even before relying upon race for
purposes of stratification, planters separated African laborers on the basis
of the geographical location of their original purchase, and soon developed categories for enslaved blacks according to occupation. In the late
16th and early 17th centuries Europeans’ ‘slave’ ledgers recorded the
national and local identities of Africans arriving in the West Indies and
Latin America as Eboes, Congos, or Coromantins (for example). These
created elaborate typologies, assigning work habits and abilities
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according to each enslaved person’s imagined ethnic tendencies. Planters
sought out Mandingoes and Foulahs for domestic service, many of whom
were literate in Arabic. At Saint Dominique, skilled sugar production was
dominated by Kongos and Fulbes, who were usually assigned to the
boilers. Twenty-five percent of Yoruba and Igbo men also worked at
boiling kettles (Thompson, 1997: 160–61).
As enslaved populations became increasingly creolized, however,
slavers shifted to color-coded hierarchies. The separation of the mixed
population from other Africans began with white men who left portions
of their estates to mixed offspring, or (in rare instances) who raised their
‘mulatto’ offspring along with their white children. Once they reached
adulthood mixed offspring were at times given special privileges and
supervisory roles on the plantation. While this case should not be overstated, since the majority of these light-colored African children were
assigned to the fields along with their mothers, some were not, with a few
being sent to Europe to be educated and others becoming blacksmiths,
masons and other skilled laborers on Brazilian and West Indian plantations (Berlin and Morgan, 1993: 86; McD Beckles, 1999: 178; Thompson,
1997: 147–9).
Booms and busts in the Brazilian economy as well as a decreasing
white population created demands for miners, shopkeepers, cooks, and
other working-class people who would service the wealthy. Their
positions as middlemen required some mobility and therefore, in the eyes
of whites, some trustworthiness. In the United States, landless white
families provided plantations with food and other supplies. In Brazil,
Jamaica, and Haiti, by contrast, large numbers of poor whites did not
exist and ‘mulattos’ were assigned plantation support roles such as
overseer, domestic worker, and in some cases as members of militias.
Degler referred to this practice as the ‘ “ mulatto” escape hatch’, because
the role played by light-skinned Africans throughout the West Indies and
Brazil allowed a select group of men and women to perform physically
lighter work, while at the same time requiring these individuals to
monitor fellow blacks. To ‘escape’, in this context, literally meant having
the ability, because of skin color, to ‘avoid the backbreaking labor of fieldwork’. Over time this ‘escape’ came to include better access to skilled jobs,
education, material well-being, and status (Degler, 1971: 44–5, 182).
While most free mixed-race people suffered continuous racial harassment by whites, they were also accepted into guilds as journeymen and
in other positions which darker Africans were denied. By the 19th
century, Jamaica had created a multi-tiered economic-and-caste structure, so that mixed-race people with wealth began to join the middling
professional class. As a result of their differing ‘class’ or occupational
levels, many socially advantaged ‘mixed’ people came to view themselves
as superior to other blacks. They hesitated to use their skills and social
and political power (relative to field workers) to help their communities
organize and develop. In Brazil, throughout the 20th century, greater
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opportunities existed for light-skinned people – clearly a carry-over from
the colonial period. During the past 100 years it has become commonplace
for middle-class ‘mulattos’ in Brazil and Jamaica to disdain and even
show contempt for fellow Africans, even while barriers to success still
acted upon all people of African descent (Degler, 1971: 182–3; Engerman
and Genovese, 1975: 352–4).
Reinforcing their views of blacks as degenerative and themselves as
superior, light-skinned blacks frequently sought to associate with white
power and privilege. Unlike the racial shifting that occurred in the United
States, where the lightest-skinned Africans often sought to ‘pass’ into
white society, West Indian ‘coloreds’ retained their non-white status but
separated themselves from their mothers’ people. In colonial contexts
outside of the United States, intermarriage was not acceptable to whites,
but having a ‘mulatto’ mistress was. Whites in the United States outnumbered enslaved Africans by at least twenty to one in all periods. This
probably accounts for their society’s higher retention of English culture
and mores, and explains the pretense that as Christians they did not have
sexual encounters outside of marriage, while their more overtly racist
beliefs prohibited (or at least sought to prohibit) their sexual attraction to
and sexual encounters with blacks. One repercussion of black women’s
social-sexual status under slavery may be observed in the frequency with
which educated African Brazilian males today marry white wives, and
encouraged their offspring to marry light-skinned or white people.
Slavery’s vestiges are everywhere in post-colonial societies like Brazil, in
spite of national rhetoric about social and political equality. One scholar
pointed out that Brazil’s professed lack of racism is less convincing when
birth attendants’ first priority there is to determine whether the baby will
belong to the white, the mixed, or the black group (see Degler, 1971: 187,
190, 192–3; Thompson, 1997: 180).
Such a concern was important because of the frequency of the birth of
‘mixed’ children. In Tobago, for example, from 1819–22, half of the
children born to Creole women were ‘mixed,’ and a majority of the
remainder were fathered by mixed freedmen, a pattern which would
appear in many West Indian and Latin American societies. In retrospect
it becomes clear that, as the proportion of Africans with white ancestry
increased over time in the Caribbean’s and Brazil’s slave and post-colonial
societies, so did their identification with each other as a privileged group,
while their alienation from other Africans intensified. Racial legacies from
slavery have persisted up to the present, then, partially because of the
pervasive idealization of whiteness – as associated with privilege and
status – and partially due to the continuance of economic oppression
which, Winthrop Jordan has observed, were mutually reinforcing. In
political and social discourse this internalization of white supremacy, or
at least white advantage, meant that social problems were often ascribed
to blacks. Belief in the ‘disadvantage of African origin’ often entered the
personal realm, leading mixed-race people to associate only with others
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possessing an ‘acceptable’ amount of melanin. The stigma attached to
being black in Jamaica and Brazil, along with the potential social and
economic rewards for ‘mixing’ with lighter Africans and whites, has
created obstacles to racial solidarity and resistance to white political
dominance. This too is a lingering effect of slavery (see Degler, 1971: 157,
359; see also Harrison, 1995: 55–6 and Higman, 1984: 157).
On balance, it is clear that the European colonizers’ use of race as a
new twist in the strategy of divide and rule succeeded, at least temporarily, since for the past three centuries promotions of color consciousness,
among both blacks and whites, have enabled whites to control all colonial
societies (Degler, 1991: 71–2, 84). As the system of slavery became more
entrenched, however, perpetuation of ‘mulattos’ as a social group was
reinforced by the intentional selection by blacks and ‘coloreds’ of lightskinned mates. Vincent B. Thompson, a historian of the diaspora in the
early post-colonial period, wrote that ‘The greatest achievement of a
Black or coloured man . . . was to marry a white woman’ (1997: 181).
Consciously or subconsciously, many free Africans living in racist
societies sought (and seek) to improve their children’s life chances by
moving them, by virtue of their heredity, away from their African
heritage. These offspring in turn formed distinct social and economic
groups and utilized a variety of strategies to propel themselves toward
economic ease and away from enslavement and/or oppression (McD
Beckles, 1999: 179–81, 187).
In truth, it was the rapid death of whites in the Caribbean, combined
with the shrinking of available lands, which led to the retreat of white
laborers to the United States mainland, and which created the economic,
political, and social ‘vacuum’ into which ‘mulattos’ were pushed, and
willingly stepped. At a very early date, then, in the 17th century, according to Leonard Broom (1954: 117), ‘The preconditions for the differentiation of the Black and colored populations . . . in South Africa, Brazil, and
the United States’ were formed. In Jamaica, the almost complete absence
of working-class whites gave the ‘colored’ caste members even greater
opportunities, which they, in turn, frequently used to distance themselves
further from other blacks. ‘Lightness, valued as a promise of higher status,
became valued for itself . . . .’ (Broom, 1954: 117; Dunn, 1972: 16, 77).
Only in the late 20th and early 21st centuries has the ideology of
whiteness been widely critiqued by working people in the West Indies and
Brazil. At the same time, unfortunately, little common ground has been
found for organizing based on race, culture, or economic condition
because many mixed-raced people staff public middle-class jobs; seemingly testifying against racial exclusion. Rebecca Reichmann argues that
racism is hard to pinpoint in Brazil and, yet, rabid racial oppression has
persisted against the darkest-skinned people there. Occasionally these
black urban Brazilians have come together to demand improvements in
housing, sewerage, or water services, but their networks have tended to
be single issue projects with no overall plan to confront and resist
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discrimination based on skin color. African communities’ limited success
at organizing, due to the confusion about the source of the economic and
political disparity, is strengthened because of the ‘anti-racism’ pretenses
of the government. The visual imagery of non-whites in positions of authority combined with the government’s propaganda about equality, in
spite of oppressive conditions, helps to maintain the historical disunity
between blacks and ‘mulattos’ (Reichmann, 1992: 157).
Hauntingly, the socio-economic inequalities and stereotypes about
blacks that were formulated under slavery persist. The life chances of
blacks in Brazil are the lowest of any group. Hindrances to political
organizing remain systemic. Early Afro-Brazilian organizations, such as
the Frente Negra [Brasileira, 1931], which demanded better living
conditions for Africans and encouraged cultural pride, also failed to
address the systemic origins of inequalities. Later, when the Negritude
Literary Movement called for a resurgence of interest in African ancestry
and history through the arts, these powerful writings circulated
primarily among intellectuals, while failing to reach the masses of impoverished blacks (Reichmann, 1992: 157–9).
By the 1980s, African Brazilians’ struggles for equality had taken on
increasingly pan-African, as opposed to assimilationist, forms. Lately,
cultural organizations have performed leadership roles in creating
political awareness and cultural identity for black Brazilians. Specifically,
carnival groups have challenged police authority as well as promoting
African cultural identity. For example, the Bloc Afro is a ‘blacks only’
carnival parade focused on African people to the exclusion of whites and
all others. The traditional dress and ‘black only’ aspects of the carnival
movement were reflected in the United States during the mid-1990s where
a ‘For Us By Us’ cultural/commercial clothing line grew popular with black
urban youth. Political and cultural leadership in the late 1980s and 1990s
intertwined carnival tradition with the cultural re-creation movement
throughout the diaspora. For instance, many Afro-Brazilians increasingly
exhibited their embrace of Africanness by dressing in traditional African
style clothing, adopting an African name, and by making greater attempts
at organizing along cultural if not racial lines. The biggest hurdle to
current mobilization efforts in Brazil for those discriminated against
because of their ethnic heredity is the lack of a ‘discourse’ on the role of
racism in the recreation of economic and social relations formed under
slavery. Efforts to illuminate the workings of racism in Brazilian society
are made more difficult by the tendency of the government and business
communities to ‘absorb the symbols of resistance movements into
national and commercial art’ (Reichmann, 1992: 161–4).
Despite their complex existence dating from colonial times to the
present, it may be argued that the majority of offspring from Africans who
‘mixed’ with Europeans did not join the white racial group. The best
evidence for this is that ‘mulattos’ were discriminated against on the
basis of their African heredity, like other blacks. However, throughout the
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West Indies, Latin America, and Brazil, a large number of ‘mulattos’
consider themselves part of a separate caste from blacks. The historical
impetus for their current position is not an honorable one. That the
children of enslaved mothers are notched into colonial records as mediators for the slavers, ‘responsible for searching other slaves’ quarters and
for whipping slaves found with weapons’, provides solid evidence of the
‘mulatto’s’ role as an upholder of the slave regime (Barash, 1990: 409).
Carol Barash suggests that lighter-skinned domestic servants had an
ambiguous status which made them potentially dangerous both to fellow
laborers and to the functioning of the slaver’s household. ‘Coloreds’ in the
house found out valuable information that they could pass on to their
black comrades in the fields, or use to enhance their own survival (p. 414).
Helping to oppress a segment of society in order to promote oneself has
a well-rehearsed place in human history. In the colonial era, as well as
the present, adopting racial exclusion toward one’s family was the easier
path, the one that the majority of light-colored Africans trod.
Over 20 years ago, Chancellor Williams described what he called ‘the
mulatto problem’ in ancient Egypt. Williams examined the adoption of
mixed-race Egyptians onto the fringes of the ruling classes when black
Egypt was overtaken by Arab and later European invaders. These
African-Arabs were given privileges, along with responsibility for controlling the population, eventually embracing their middleman status and
joining in the economic system which pushed their darker relatives southward (Williams, 1976: 76).
Since the first to be called Egyptian exclusively [as opposed to Ethiopian] were
half-African and half-Asian, their general hostility to their mother’s race was
a social phenomenon that should not be passed over lightly. . . . Its nature is
essentially opportunist, a quest for security, recognition and advancement by
identifying with and becoming a part of the new power elite. . . . (Williams,
1976: 76)
So, too, free mulattos in the West Indies were frequently privileged under
the law, and we have observed that the ‘mixed’ population of Brazil joined
in discriminating against their darker-skinned brothers and sisters. In the
United States, while all people with visible African heritage were ‘black’
until the 1970s (notwithstanding the limited application of ‘mulatto’ and
related labels assigned to female entertainers in some southern US cities),
those with sufficiently light skin could and sometimes did ‘become’ white
by passing (Frazier, 1957: 690). More recently, in the United States a
debate over adding a category to the National Census for ‘bi-racial’ individuals raged. Although, on the surface, the new category seemed fair, by
taking (for the first time in North America) both parents’ heritage into
account, many African Americans were suspicious. They countered that
a category for ‘mixed’ blacks could substantially reduce their political
clout, since population was frequently used as a guideline in federal
program expenditures, and more significantly, for black political power
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bases obtained through the re-drawing of voting districts in the 1970s and
1980s.
This recent idea of creating a new ethnic category for the census indicated that the United States’ ‘multi-racial’ population had grown, either
numerically or in terms of social acceptability, to the extent that many
white families had, or finally had acknowledged, racially mixed relatives.
Chancellor Williams’ historical and sociological paradigm of inter-ethnic
regimes’ strategic use of ‘mulattos’ as a buffer caste matches up well with
the arrangement of a highly color-conscious reality in Brazil and the
Caribbean for the past two hundred years. This ‘acculturation’ process
was slowed by geo-climatic conditions in North America, conditions
which allowed Euro-Americans to live in white-majority communities
throughout most of the country, resulting in rigid white/black racial
policies. In Haiti, Jamaica, and Brazil, however, whites depended upon
mixed-race individuals to help maintain their regime, and this necessitated some power and status sharing (Schwartz, 1982: 3, 18, 25, 81).2
North American blacks have, like Brazilians and West Indians, been
subjected to the idealization of lightness in their schools and in the media
as a result of whites’ over-weaning self-admiration, in addition to systematic efforts during slavery aimed at denigrating the African people’s
homeland – efforts stemming from planters’ unending attempts at gaining
psychological power over their workers. Fortunately, the idea of a
‘mulatto’ classification has been hindered by African American working
people in the United States. Black and brown men and women point to
Euro-American duplicity, recalling that at one time if one-sixteenth of an
individual’s ancestry was African then that person was considered black,
and recalling the ‘one-drop [of “black blood”]’ rule. It has largely been
these everyday African Americans, ranging across the color prism, who
reject being divided and stratified yet again by whites and whose
insistence upon group unity forestalled the creation of legal categories for
‘half-castes’ in the United States up to now.
Notes
1 DuBois is quoted in David J. Hellwig (1992: 31–2). The terms ‘mulatto’ and
‘colored’ are socially constructed images, which refer to non-existing racial
groups and are, like the idea of human ‘races’, scientifically invalid. In the
Brazilian context, however, they refer to creolized Africans who have a white
parent or grandparent. I use them in this article in order to locate the origin
of these constructs and to explain interactions between artificially separated
groups of Africans with oppressive institutions and with each other.
2 Schwartz discusses Carl Degler’s contribution to the field through his book,
Neither Black nor White (Degler, 1971).
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Johnson
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Tekla Ali Johnson is a PhD candidate at the University of Nebraska,
Lincoln. Ali Johnson’s primary research interests include
Africana/African American history and the history of resistance. She
has recently co-authored ‘Frederick Douglass and Nebraska’, with
John R. Wunder (Nebraska History, 2004). Address: University of
Nebraska-Lincoln, Department of History, 612 Oldfather Hall,
Lincoln, NE 68588, USA.
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